ABSTRACT
In this paper, we explored the impact of course design elements that aim to support and sustain students' engagement during a 12-week online course. The course we analyzed targeted higher education, master-level students of Computer Science and Educational Technologies, and took place fully online during the COVID-19 pandemic. The course was facilitated by a Learning Management System (LMS), and due to the circumstances, the instructor's primary goal was to motivate students to actively participate during the course duration. To that end, the instructor implemented a course design focused on integrating elements such as interactive activities, short quizzes, hidden "easter eggs,” and real-time webinars. To study the impact of these elements on students' activity, we carried out an exploratory analysis of students' activity as recorded by the log files of the LMS and the qualitative feedback that students provided to the instructor. Our results suggest that the course design supported sustaining students' engagement. The level of students' activity varied for the learning materials and resources, but we confirmed a high usage of the quizzes over the course duration. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda.
ABSTRACT
Content-heavy lectures and traditional summative assessment practices have long been employed in higher education classrooms. Opposed to this approach, two instructors teaching an introductory content-rich course to undergraduate students in a teacher education program experimented with existing educational theories to prioritize experiential, reflective learning grounded in formative assessment practice. Through experimentation, collaboration, and reflection, an emerging course design framework was established. The innovative teaching solution framework combined backward design, Kolb's model for experiential learning, and imaginative education (IE) theory to create a community of learners where enduring understanding is the outcome. When COVID-19 forced classes to remote learning environments, the true fidelity of the framework emerged through instructor self-assessment and student feedback. This emergent Imaginative Course Design Framework allows educators to structure their courses as engaging, meaningful, and lasting learning experiences that support students in depth of understanding. The authors share concrete examples of performance tasks from their education course to demonstrate how the emergent Imaginative Course Design Framework connects to theory and creates the conditions for rich, inspired learning. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to identify which course design elements students perceive as supporting an easier transition to emergency remote teaching due to COVID-19, as well as to use those items to develop the Online Supportive Course Design (OSCD) measure. By asking students to rate their course with the easiest transition and hardest transition to emergency remote teaching, this study identified which structural elements were most important for supporting students during the transition. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, a seven-item measure was developed to operationalize OSCD, and initial validity was established by examining the relationships between OSCD, autonomy support, and teacher competence. Finally, practical implications for university faculty and areas for future research are discussed.
ABSTRACT
Industry 4.0 and 5.0 topics are emerging fields and have seen rising demand recently. There is a critical need, on the other hand, for improved methods of instructing programming languages since a growing lack of student motivation during the pandemic has had a deleterious influence on the education of programmers. In this context, online/hybrid computer programming courses must be addressed with innovative solutions to support the field with well-educated professionals. In this paper, we present a case study to propose an innovative tailored instructional design for the online/hybrid learning environments for programming courses in engineering faculties. To develop the instructional design, the Kemp Instructional Design Model was followed. The instructional design is a result of the main outputs of the RECOM "Redesigning Introductory Computer Programming Using Innovative Online Modules” project, which aims to bridge the gap between the existing course design in programming courses and the needs of "Covid” and "post-Covid” generation students. © The Authors.
ABSTRACT
During the Covid-19 pandemic, global teachers gained extensive experiences with teaching online courses. To design quality online courses in the post-pandemic era, the impact of the latest technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), must be considered. Investigating how teachers incorporate AI-powered tools and how students perceive learning experiences with the tools is crucial for informing effective online course design. In this case study, we presented an 18-week online English course for 43 senior high school students in Taiwan. Designed according to learning theories, this course aimed to cultivate autonomous EFL learners, who learned to read and write with the support of three AI-powered tools (i.e. Linggle Write, Linggle Read, and Linggle Search). Data were collected from the instructors and students in both qualitative and quantitative formats. Results showed that a learning loop was created to connect online learning with offline practice;students had better optimal experience in student-centered presentations than in teacher-centered lectures;and language proficiency predicted semester grade and assignment quantity. This study has both theoretical and practical value;it serves as an example of how to design a quality synchronous online course on AI tools for EFL reading and writing based on theoretical approaches. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Interactive Learning Environments is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
The study reports how "A Glimpse of China," a cultural course that had been typically conducted offline for cultural immersion, adapted to the COVID-19-imposed challenges of an online transition. The teaching team sought the guidance of social constructivism and the WisCom Framework, made adaptations in the instructional design, assessed the learning outcomes and course effects, and proposed a plan for future improvements. Content analysis of the course reports of 10 students from Class 2020 and 2021 confirmed the success of the online transition, and yet indicated that experiential learning and interactive collaboration should be strengthened for better learning experience and outcomes. As an improvement for future students, a set of experiential projects is developed. Each project constitutes a collaborative inquiry cycle that aims to build a more desirable wisdom community for both the learners and the instructor.
ABSTRACT
In light of a new paradigm to feedback, the focus shifts from how and when instructors deliver feedback to how the learning environment and the feedback practices sustain agentic behavior on feedback. Feedback produces learning if the students are given the opportunity to use and to act on it, and thus to move forward. Ample research on innovative models and designs for feedback and assessment in higher education courses exist. However, a one-size-fits-all model does not exist. Each university setting represents a unique case, and hence the replicability of a model is impossible. This poses a challenge for innovative higher education institutions (HEIs) that consider the promotion of students' agency on feedback, a distinguishing attribute for their learning experience onsite, and in the Covid-19 inflicted transition to remote instruction. This study used content analysis to investigate how feedback and assessment feedback design, in the online component of a blended course in English for Academic Purposes, can sustain opportunities for feedback encounters and enable student uptake of feedback. After exploring the process of assessment and feedback design, different agents of the course and potential feedback encounters were mapped and analyzed in a sociocultural perspective. An established matrix of feedback for learning was used to investigate and code the feedback encounters generated in the course. The results of the content analysis indicated satisfactory student uptake of feedback and opportunities for potential feedback encounters before, during, and after the assessment. Additionally, the results pointed to the need for more feedforward and self-regulatory commentaries. © 2023 by Anna Moni.
ABSTRACT
This paper addresses problems of learning programming languages for healthcare professionals. Learners may have limitation of time to understand and apply their knowledge and skills of these topics. This study aimed to create a course design and a flexible learning platform to increase the flexibility learning platform for programming languages in both the normal and the COVID-19 situations. The way in which learners learn was discussed and designed. After a lecture-based session, students could use any of their computing devices including computers with several operating systems, tablets, and smartphones to practice the exercise. Students may workout whenever they wanted and from any locations when the internet connection was provided. In the course design, it began with the programming module and then follow by the computer system module. In this module, a flexible learning platform was constructed to teach the PHP. The real server was installed with Ubuntu Linux, and environments for running the PHP. For the client, only a web browser was enough to learn coding. However, some useful editors with the ability of remote syncing files on the server, were introduced. With this platform, instructors could easily review and modify codes written by learners. Learners also gained some experiences in the computer systems module, i.e., operating systems and network. This concept was applied on a course namely "Computer Systems and Principles of Programming for Pharmaceutical and Health Informatics” in Master Degree in Pharmacy (Health Informatics) in academic year of 2021 during the COVID-19 situation. The results from the questionnaire suggested that the course design and the platform were very useful and flexible. Students had more knowledge and skills by using this learning environment. © 2022 Association for Computing Machinery.
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Online Professional Learning (PL) has become a fundamental modality of providing PL support to teachers. The online learning design is one of the characteristics linked to the course's effectiveness. This Educational Leadership Portfolio (ELP) aims to improve the quality of online professional learning courses by identifying the features of online course design that are lacking or need improvement. Specifically, this ELP seeks to assess the quality of an online course design using specific quality standards, identify the required revisions and redesign the course to ensure that it models the alignment with the standards. The University of Delaware's Professional Development Center for Educators (PDCE) offered the course to middle school math teacher leaders from a partnering school district. Due to the urgency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, PDCE shifted its professional learning programs to online platforms to continue providing support to teachers through PL. Unfortunately, the instructors at PDCE lacked the expertise to design online courses. Research shows that developing a high-quality online course is challenging for instructors who lack pedagogical online experience and skills. There are several aspects of online course design that influence learning. This study identifies and develops strategies by synthesizing the empirical online professional learning literature. In this ELP, I proposed two strategies based on the literature to help improve the quality of the online course design. First, I reviewed the literature to determine what research says about a high-quality online course design, and secondly, I assessed the course using identified evaluation instruments reported in the literature. The ELP documents how I implemented the strategies as a course evaluator and advisor. The evaluation incorporated a survey to determine the elements of the online course design that the participants perceived to be supportive. The findings from the survey showed that most teacher leaders felt that the design elements and media tools incorporated in the course supported their learning. However, an assessment using the Open Suny Course Quality Review (OSCQR) rubric revealed that some critical areas of the course design needed revision. Therefore, the evaluation tool provided an action plan to redesign an online course using the popular Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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Systems Thinking can help to solve complex problems in different domains. For an engineering master's program, we designed a seminar course to teach Systems Thinking. For the seminar we use qualitative models known as archetypes as conceptual models and the Covid-19 pandemic as problem context. In this paper we describe the course design and report findings from running it. Based on students' evaluation and the materials they produced throughout the course, our findings (1) support our design assumptions regarding student motivation, (2) give hints on students' struggling with Systems Thinking and understanding and applying archetypes in particular. With this we want to contribute to the discussion of how to teach Systems Thinking in Higher Education. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
In response to the evolving needs of students and faculty, a small team of librarians rebuilt their library instruction program from the ground-up in 2020. The new approach consisted of three aspects: shifting introductory lessons to easily-accessible Canvas LMS modules, revamping LibGuides, and introducing a credit-bearing course. Together, they allowed librarians to move beyond traditional one-shot instruction, form deeper partnerships with faculty, and make the expertise of librarians more accessible. While the impetus for change was the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the new program laid the groundwork for rethinking traditional approaches to instruction and finding better ways to meet faculty and students at the point of need.
ABSTRACT
During the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 in Greece that coincided with the spring semester of the year 2020, conventional face-to-face lessons presented a threat to public health. As a result, house confinement measures were taken. Universities, due to their offering either directly or via their lifelong education centers, were partially prepared to offer distant learning solutions for their students during the pandemic. The lessons, in the general case, were delivered in an ad hoc manner utilizing teachers' personal experiences and preferences creating some pressure on existing infrastructures. In the case of the Department of Industrial Design & Production Engineering at the University of West Attica, things were more organized than in the general case: there was a, more or less, uniform practice of preferring synchronous lessons and some monitoring was planned in order to evaluate the application for future reference. While data collected in the process are still going through statistical analysis there are some preliminary results that can be reported here.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic created an unpredictable and stressful situation for both students and instructors. With current instruction largely occurring in an online environment, we propose that increased flexibility in course structure will best support student learning. Flexible course structure offers a trauma-aware approach to teaching, is in line with the Universal Design for Learning, and increases student motivation and meaningful learning. It can also provide more authentic experiences akin to science-based careers. We provide several specific suggestions for incorporating flexibility in one's class, as well as outline considerations and caveats. Our hope is that flexibility necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to inspire change in future course design and educational paradigms.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis of worldwide that announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2020. It has affect life aspects and all activities. One of the main sectors has affected education sector where students and educational institutions faced challenges to continue the learning process effectively. Therefore, many universities utilized the internet-based infrastructure to keep the learning process continuity but students' motivation becomes challenges to shift education through the online learning. This paper aims to examine the factors affecting students' motivation toward online learning during Covid-19 pandemic in Arab Open University in Saudi Arabia. The study framework introduced five factors are;self-regulation, dialogue with students, dialogue with instructors, instructors' activities, and course design that affect students' motivation toward online learning. This research applied quantitative approach b using a survey that includes items to measure the factors. There were 504 online survey collected from students which distributed by their emails. SPSS was used to analyze research data and examine its hypothesis. The main result found that all factors of the study are: self-regulation, dialogue with students, dialogue with instructors, instructors' activities, and course design have significant effect on students' motivation toward online learning during Covid-19 in Arab Open University in Saudi Arabia. The findings showed that student self-regulation and course design are more likely affect students' motivation followed by dialogue with their instructor and instructor's activities, whereas students' dialogue with their colleagues found the lower effect on their motivation toward online learning. The findings can be helpful to educational institutions that plan to adopt online learning as future activity to improve their learning process in successfully embracing the technology to deal with any crisis in the future. In addition, many studies have conducted research to address the Covid-19 problems faced by students related to online learning during COVID-19 in the world. This study contributes knowledge by addressing the challenges faced instructors to motivate students during the online learning especially during Covid-19 pandemic by introducing factors affecting student's motivation toward online learning. Therefore, the current study contributes to replenishes the gap by contributing to the literature of online learning in Middle East especially in Saudi Arabia context during the pandemic situation. © 2022, Success Culture Press. All rights reserved.
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In this study we seek to understand the recursive relationships between feeling, sense-making, and rapid online course design at the onset of COVID-19. To elucidate how emotion was implicated in learning design decisions, we offer a qualitative analysis of nine instructor interviews from diverse academic disciplines. Originally developed for an open online course, these interviews exemplify how instructors at a large midwestern university moved their residential courses online at the onset of the pandemic. © ISLS.
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a framework for the systematic adaptation and digitalisation of engineering product development courses in the event of a crisis. Applicants can use resources of the framework to identify crisis-related boundary conditions that impact the delivery of education and are assisted in determining the necessary level of course digitalisation to respond to the crisis. Furthermore, the framework comprehends a review of modern educational teaching objectives, as well as a table containing tools and methodologies linked to educational targets. These can be used to enhance course design to keep students independently of their learning profiles engaged in study activities and to uphold an excellent knowledge acquisition in a volatile environment. An exemplary application of the framework on a CAD course in a higher education context guides the educator through the processes. © Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Disrupt, Innovate, Regenerate and Transform, E and PDE 2022. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The phenomenon known as emergency eLearning saw many institutions of higher education switch from face-to-face learning to virtual or online course delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The transition posed a unique suite of challenges to instructors and students alike, especially in the case of active learning pedagogy. This article reflects on the experiences of a multi-institutional, multi-term pedagogical project that implemented peer review assignments as opportunities for asynchronous but nevertheless active learning. We shared instructor experiences through the course design and application stages of courses in International Relations and political economy, discuss the ability of peer review assignments to create active learning opportunities in online courses, and reflect on our own pedagogical development benefited from the community of practice.
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The primary purpose of this study is to investigate ways of improving preservice teachers' engagement in a teacher education course designed for online delivery and offered during the COVID-19 pandemic. While online teaching is a prominent research area, descriptions of online learning environments based on sound frameworks are typically missing in the literature. Addressing this gap, we investigated the role of online instruction, whose design was guided by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) framework, and supporting different types of interaction on students' engagement and course achievement. We designed two versions of the same course differing only in terms of the level of learner-learner and learner-content interaction support provided. The participants were 38 preservice teachers from a range of departments, who were in two different sections of the course, randomly assigned to one of the versions. Data were collected using a modified version of the NSSE survey at the beginning and at the end of the course. The analysis showed that online course design based on the NSSE framework was effective for improving students' engagement in a project-based teacher education course even in the COVID-19 pandemic period. Meanwhile, the participants did not differ in terms of their engagement scores in time regarding the course version they attended. And, there was no difference regarding students' achievement scores as measured by their final course grades. The findings highlighted the need to design online courses based on sound theory and provided insight into prioritizing different types of interactions in project-based online courses.
ABSTRACT
Previously, we partnered with food banks to design a service-learning course in our Industrial Distribution Program to help food pantries deliver food and solve their operational problems. However, students complained that we did not provide well-defined problems for students to solve in this course. They suggested that we provide well-designed processes, activities, and pre-designed tools so that they can save much time and focus on better serving the clients. For this purpose, we participated in a Houston Food Bank (HFB) Needs Assessment project. Apart from helping the HFB to determine the needs of the clients and HFB post-COVID-19, this project was also designed to provide a roadmap for future service-learning courses to follow. This project was conducted in the summer of 2021. The project team consisted of members from Industrial Distribution Program and HFB. To design the project, we discussed the issues, identified agencies and clients, decided on data collection methods, formulated focus group questions, and chose survey instruments. We implemented the data collection and analyzed the data, followed by writing a report and presenting the results. In addition to providing a guideline for food banks and pantries to distribute food, this project can be used to design better service-learning courses in Industrial Distribution Program that can enhance community impact. The next step is that in the fall semester of 2021, we launched another food insecurity service-learning course that followed our project design and execution to avoid the aforementioned issues, allowing food agencies and students to better serve the communities. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 restrictions compelled institutions worldwide to transition into the remote teaching-learning modality abruptly. Studies evaluating the effectiveness of remote teaching and learning strategies are scant. With the recent shift to this new learning mode, little is known about the fulfillment of learning outcomes and student satisfaction. This research examines the impact of the teaching-learning course design and instructional strategies as implemented by this faculty researcher last school year 2020-2021. It intends to provide practical guidance for teachers aiming to evaluate the effectiveness of their remote teaching/strategies. The research is both quantitative (causal) and qualitative design. A total of 104 management students from a Philippine state university participated in an online survey. The quantitative investigation assessed the influence of the independent variables – the Community of Inquiry (CoI) presence strategies, course design, and instructional strategies on students’ perceived learning and satisfaction, utilizing the CoI framework and adopting scales from online teaching. © 2022, University of San Jose-Recoletos. All rights reserved.